Relationship between immunological phenotype and hematological response to alpha-IFN treatment in 35 patients with hairy cell leukemia.
During the past 6 years, clinical trials employing alpha-interferon (alpha-IFN) in hairy cell leukemia (HCL) have shown dramatic improvement in the management of this disease. Complete remissions (CR), however, are relatively rare (10-15%) and a minority of patients (10-25%) do not respond adequately to alpha-IFN. The possibility that the poor response to alpha-IFN treatment could be related to a peculiar immunological phenotype of the hairy cell (HC) was investigated in this study. The results demonstrated that, in the majority of patients who failed to respond to alpha-IFN, HC showed an immunological phenotype characterized by positivity with the CD5 monoclonal antibody which is usually absent on HC and characteristically expressed on B-chronic lymphocytic leukemia cells. In fact, among the 10 HCL patients who presented with this phenotype, only 5 partial remissions (PR) and 5 minor responses (MR) were achieved, as opposed to the 3 complete remissions (CR), 19 PR and 3 MR observed in the 25 CD5-negative patients. The possibility that a more extensive immunological analysis of HCL patients at diagnosis may be predictive of the response to IFN treatment is postulated.
Lauria
F
F
Istituto di Ematologia e A. Seràgnoli, University of Bologna, Italy.
Zinzani
P L
PL
Raspadori
D
D
Foà
R
R
Buzzi
M
M
Gugliotta
L
L
Bocchia
M
M
Benfenati
D
D
Tura
S
S
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016130:Immunophenotyping; D007370:Interferon Type I / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D007943:Leukemia, Hairy Cell / Q000097:blood / Q000276:immunology / Q000628:therapy*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged
D007370:Interferon Type I